


hell hath no fury

by deniigiq



Series: Dumpster Fires Verse [31]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Arguing, Bad Influences, Gen, Growing Up, Intervention, M/M, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team Red, Team as Family, Training, conflicts can be resolved!, it is true! It is possible!, kind of, old people ruminating on the youth, wade pursues the house of his dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 10:02:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18118562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: He’d come back. Peter was a hero. He’d been one this whole time. He wasn’t selfish enough to let his pride stand between himself and his community.“It’s not selfish to not let yourself be exploited, Samuel,” Steve pointed out with the scrub brush. Sam almost shoved him back into the tub.Yeah, so what if they were his own words?Peter would—he’d—Well, fuck.  Maybe he wouldn’t.(Peter refuses to join the Avengers at age 18. He steps back and Matt and Wade step up. Everyone keeps bothering Sam about it so he goes out to get the whole story.)





	hell hath no fury

**Author's Note:**

> second fic from tumblr poll. 
> 
> So I want to preface this with saying that I don't hate Tony, but I think he makes a lot of assumptions in regards to his relationship with Peter which Pete, when he's a little older, probably does not appreciate. 
> 
> Also this fic takes place over the span of a couple months. Peter's almost 18 when he first breaks contact, and then when they see him again, he's just entering college.

The kid had disappeared. Vanished. Just plain gone and abandoned this mortal plane. Or maybe just the part of the mortal plane Sam was operating around. He hadn’t seen him for weeks.

And that was a little concerning because, while Peter was largely out of reach, Spiderman was still crashing into buildings all over the city. He’d made the news twice that month for some big fucking shit involving a whole lot of bullets and a fairly complex, overwhelmingly political, plot to corrupt the District Attorney.

He was, Sam realized as he the news anchor interviewed an officer begrudgingly admitting that their arrest could not have been made without NYC’s favorite masked menace, growing up.

Growing up fast.

His shoulders in the station’s video clips were broader than Sam remembered them being, and, if he squinted hard, he thought that his suit looked a little different too. Gone was the fire-engine red and cookie-monster blue. Gone was the cute little spider on his chest. He was a navy kid now and the legs of the new spider stretched out to tuck themselves close up against the edges of his pecs.

Kid was like whole different person.

 

 

Sam didn’t think anything of it until he and Hawkeye and JB were chilling after a job, waiting for Stark to get his life together and emerge from his den to give them the analysis of the data they’d recently acquired. He only thought of it because Hawkeye was staring mindlessly into the guts of the tv in the common room.

And then there was Pete; a re-hashing of the story from last week on the screen. The perp was going to trial. Poor fuck was up against a now enraged District Attorney.

Hell hath no fury like a lawyer scorned.

“Where the hell is Pete these days?” he asked the room.

And even before he finished the sentence, he had four hands that were not his own all over his fucking face.

Sam could take a hint.

 

 

He waited until he got home to corner Steve. It wasn’t hard. He was sleepy from a day of speech giving and baby-kissing and was, ergo, defenseless.

He sat on him.

Steve made an interested grunt but did not otherwise move.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” he mumbled into the duvet cover on the bed.

“The hell is Peter these days?” Sam asked, point blank.

Steve chuffed a derisive laugh into the duvet.

“Waging war on the establishment,” he said with…pride?

“Which establishment?” Sam demanded.

“I dunno, which one do you think?”

He knew which one.

“He loves Tony.”

Steve slid out from under Sam’s ass and rolled onto his side so he could wrap himself more effectively around Sam’s hip. He seemed smug.

“Loved,” he said.

Well, fuck. Sam had thought he’d never see the day.

 

 

Banner hid behind all kinds of equipment and blustered on and on about sudden meetings and wow, he actually had a date with some friends to get to, sorry, Sam. No time to talk, maybe next week?

Or never, Sam? Please, Sam, I don’t want to talk about this.

Nope. Sam was on a mission. He had gossip to get and Natasha was in France.

He broke Banner down by asking Thor. Thor knew, Thor obviously knew, and Thor too, was a gossip hound deep down in his giant, alien heart. He only got two words out before Banner leapt in front of him, blustering all over this time with plenty of ‘it’s just a misunderstanding’s and ‘it isn’t even a big deal, certainly isn’t permanent’s.

Thor shoved him aside because he was the real MVP.

“The Spiderling has accused Stark of elitism and short-sightedness,” Thor told Sam with the same air as his Aunt Cathy talking about her neighbor’s husband. “Stark took these insults as expected and argued that Peter doesn’t know what he’s talking about due to a lack of experience and general life-living.”

Good for you, kiddo. Stick it to the man.

“So he left?” Sam asked while Bruce groaned loudly behind them and buried himself in his hands.

“He left,” Thor confirmed.

“What, like, the whole org?” Sam clarified.

“The whole org—both orgs actually,” Thor told him.

Wait. Both?

Bruce sighed like he was pulling the air from the very bottom of his soul.

“Tony offered him Avengers membership again,” he admitted.

Now _that_ was surprising. Peter wanted to be an Avenger, as far as Sam knew. Desperately. There was nothing he wanted more in the world, possibly the universe. And yeah, maybe Stark had been a fucking idiot when he’d offered the kid the job the first time as a fifteen-year-old, but in a few months here, Pete would be, what, eighteen now? He’d be old enough to choose to die for his country. Old enough to choose to kill himself slowly with cigarettes.

Eighteen was an arbitrary, bullshit age of majority, in Sam’s opinion, but still. It was the arbitrary, bullshit age of majority that their society had agreed upon, and so Stark was well within his rights to extend the offer to Pete here.

And honestly, why wouldn’t he? Pete was an asset in everything but espionage. Kid couldn’t lie to save his fucking life. Nat had tried, bless her. She really had. She’d tried hard enough that Sam had thought for a minute that Pete was going to wind up living with her or just straight up dead, hung upside down in his closet as a warning to any and all future members.

“He refused because of elitism?” he clarified with the others.

Thor hummed. Banner clenched and unclenched his hands.

“Well, I didn’t see all of it,” Bruce admitted, “But according to Tony, he mentioned that Peter would probably want to cut back on the time he spends on the ground after he joins up, since he’d have bigger fish to fry and uh. It didn’t go down well.”

Technically true on Stark’s part. Playing the national and local hero at the same time was just asking for burn out. But maybe just a hint tactless given Pete’s whole friendly, neighborhood schtick.

“So he called him an elitist bastard and stormed out,” Sam said.

“More or less,” Banner agreed.

No wonder Steve was pleased. His bad habits had been well and truly taken up by the youth.

“He running by himself now?” he asked.

“He has friends,” Thor said cheerfully.

Sam wondered if maybe he was a little proud of the kid, too. Thor’s ideas of authoritarian rule were shaky at best. His idea of being King of Asgard was setting up committee after committee and council after council, to the point where Asgard, the diasporic community they had become, functioned just fine without him standing over them. You only really knew who Asgardians were nowadays because they would stop and bow to Thor in the street and then hurry off in another direction—any other direction, as if Thor was an embarrassing dad dropping them off at a school dance.

“Good friends?” he verified.

Thor gave him a wide smile.

“Are there any other kinds?”

Yes. 100%. Without question.

“We’re just hoping it’ll blow over,” Bruce said. “Peter’s a reasonable kid and he loves Tony. He probably just needs some space to think about the commitment. And anyways, he’s left stuff at his work station, so that’s a good sign that he’ll at least come back for a bit.”

Right. Okay. Sam would give them the benefit of the doubt, they spent more time with Peter than he did.

 

 

 **BB:** hi sam

 **BB:** so just go ahead and disregard everything I’ve ever said okay?

 **BB:** also, completely unrelated question: advice for calming someone having a breakdown?

 

 

“This is fucking exhausting,” Steve groused as he shucked all his armor into the tub. It was going to need a soak. Everyone’s was going to need a soak. Sam’s skin—his _skin,_ not his armor—was slippery with unidentifiable fluid. It was a cute mix of nasty-ass sewer creature blood, radiator fluid, fucking _sewer water_ and probably a host of unholy bacteria. JB had gone out back with the biggest pot they owned to light a fire and boil his suit into submission, nineteenth-century-style.

“My fucking nan swore by it, and if it’s good enough to hold off the TB for her, it’s good enough for me,” he told Sam’s raised eyebrow when he came in to dump all their recently removed armor into a trashbag for transport to the yard.

“Exhausting,” Steve reiterated after showers had been hand and all the armor was bubbling away outside. They’d finally turned their combined pile of boots to a semblance of their original color, but it would take another hour or so of dedicated scrubbing to return them to mint condition.

“The toxic sludge or Stark?” Sam asked after warding JB off for the second time. Man was crazy if he thought he was going to boil boots in this house. That was some soup-making bullshit, that’s what that was.

Steve had to think about it.

“Both, but mostly Stark. Pete’s dealt with shit like this before. All Tony had to do was make _one call, Sam_. Fuck.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong, per se. Pete’s new repertoire of repeat, mutant offenders were like, obsessed with the sewers. Peter probably had the whole system memorized. Hell, he probably went down there once a month with some kind of mutant weed sprayer to mark his territory and ward off interlopers.

With just a hint of Peter’s frankly disturbing sewer know-how, they might have been able to reduce the amount of time and screaming spent underground.

“Everyone’s gotta have a feud with someone, man,” he said, “Pete’s just picked Stark for now. Makes sense; he’s the closest available target.”

Steve paused and set down his brush.

“You really think so?”

Really think what?

“That he’ll come back?”

Woah, Rogers. Take it easy there. Of course, Pete would come back. Peter wasn’t a fucking idiot. Spiderman was doing a hell of a lot of damage out there on his own, but he was one guy. A kid still, honestly. Working-class kid from a single-parent household. The only resources Peter had were a big-ass brain and whatever he could pick out of dumpsters. And his greatest downfall was his fat fucking heart.

He’d come back. Peter was a hero. He’d been one this whole time. He wasn’t selfish enough to let his pride stand between himself and his community.  

“It’s not selfish to not let yourself be exploited, Samuel,” Steve pointed out with the scrub brush. Sam almost shoved him back into the tub.

Yeah, so what if they were his own words?

Peter would—he’d—

Well, fuck.  Maybe he wouldn’t.

 

 

 **BB:** sam.

 **BB:** sorry to bother, but have another slight question

 **BB:** in the case of friend talking in circles, what can be done in terms of distraction? Asking as a friend of a friend. Have already tried googling it. meditation has not proved successful

 **SW:** Tell him to talk to Peter

 **BB:** see I tried that one too and was met with much resistance

 **SW:** tell him to suck it up, then tell him to talk to peter

 **BB:** was hoping for something a little more counselor-y here if I’m honest

 **SW:** counseling is to help people identify their problems and come up with feasible solutions to address them. He already knows both the problem and the solution; I can’t help him if he don’t wanna act on it.

 **BB:** noted

 

 

 **JR:** hi sam, sorry to bother you. bruce said he talked to you earlier; thanks for the advice. Listen, I’m sorry to ask this of you, but do you think you can get in touch with the kid? I tried calling him, but he’s not answering any of, well, anyone’s messages and I think I want to get a better idea of where he’s coming from.

 **SW:** hey Rhodey, totally get that you’re coming from a good place here, but it’s not your job to mediate these kinds of conflicts. If Peter isn’t ready to talk, he’s probably not ready to listen. Stark’s just going to have to learn how to deal with that.

 **JR:** I mean, I get that, but Tony is my friend and I don’t think he realized how much his and Pete’s relationship meant to him until it was gone. Not really comfortable with leaving him to sit in it.

 **SW:** not comfortable because he’s uncomfortable? or not comfortable because you’re used to making everyone get along? Sorry, just clarifying to try to figure out how this is your problem.

 **JR:** touché

 

 

Sam’s phone was, well, highly active. Word of the conflict between Spiderman and Ironman had spread through the Avengers—auxiliary members included--and everyone, as per fucking usual, had decided that he was the one who somehow magically knew how to resolve this. His phone had spent the last evening buzzing with texts. Requests for advice, concerns about certain persons’ states of being and attempts at understanding why the fuck someone would refuse an Avengers offer.

And here’s the thing.

Sam was a counselor and he was happy to counsel anyone of any creed, color, etc. etc. But he hadn’t joined this fucking org to be everyone’s fucking therapist. He already did all that shit at the VA. He was trained to work with soldiers. Soldiers. That was his shit. His caseload was full to the brim already. He didn’t have the time or the goddamn interest in improving all these people’s lives at the expense at his own.

He really had said, after all, that it was not selfish to resist exploitation.

JB helped by hiding the phone somewhere indeterminable.

Steve helped by re-hiding it when Sam’s toddler niece found it like a champ.

 

 

About a week later, he ended up bumping into the other Wilson at the nursery of all places, trying to convey to three fascinated customer service reps the exact requirements of this plant he wanted to purchase. No, he did not have pictures. No, he did not have a backyard. No, it could not go on the balcony.

Sam strongly suspected that this was cat-related again.

Wade honestly did not seem to know that he was obsessed with his cat. He truly, sincerely, did not know this. And no one with any braincells in their heads had the nerve to point it out to him.

He’d rejected a jasmine plant and was gesturing at a spider plant with both hands, saying that he wanted something like this but taller, when he caught sight of Sam over the heads of his team of now four garden customer service reps and just shook his head.

 _Do not ask me_ , that gesture said, _I know what you want to ask me and I refuse to get involved with this shit._

Wilson was a smart cookie.

Sam waited until he left the nursery.

 

 

“Oh, come on, I literally just said don’t do it,” Wade griped with his arms full of potting soil and leafy terror.

“Not here to counsel, just here to ask questions,” Sam said.

Wade stopped and rounded on him with a fierce look.

“Same way your buddy Stark’s been calling me to ‘ask questions?’” he demanded.

Yikes.

“Yeah, except I don’t give a shit about Stark,” Sam said. “More concerned about the kid. He alright? Can’t be easy to be disappointed like that.”

Wade stared at him. Squinted at his eyes and searched him all over for signs that he was wearing a wire. Sam mentally prepared himself to be frisked in the street, but the moment didn’t come. Wade hitched the soil more securely over his shoulder and then shrugged.

“He’s alright. Bitter. Hoo boy. Think sucking on soap.”

That was disgusting, thank you for that.

“No problem, boo.”

“He’s getting tall,” Sam noted. Wade laughed.

“Damn right he is; so fuckin’ cute. Keeps walking right into shit. Fuckin’ _hilarious_. Had to get him down a tunnel the other day and he used to fit just fine, you know? Stood up too fast, cracked his head against the top and blubbered for like, an hour. Beautiful. Fucking beautiful.”

Ah. So when Thor said Peter was with ‘friends’ he meant that he was hanging around with these characters.

“What’s the secret, huh?” he asked, “Y’all feeding him after midnight now?”

“Nah,” Wade said, loose and languid. “Just got him on a weekly routine. Trying to bulk him up a bit, but damn if his metabolism don’t make it easy. Red’s keeps feeding him protein shakes and shit, but everyone who’s anyone knows all it takes to pack on the pounds is a diet of solid cheese. Anyways, y’all are missing out. I’m taping the whole thing, though, don’t you even fret. Gonna put together a montage here in a minute. Get some Rocky music on top. Send it to everyone at his school anonymously. It’ll be great.”

Sam was abruptly reminded of why he avoided Wade Wilson.

“Cheese, man?” he asked.

“Oh yeah, cheese. Nachos. Burgers. Pizza. Good shit for a growing boy.”

Sam wasn’t 100% sure, but he was pretty sure that Pete was borderline vegetarian. At least that was the impression he’d gotten, given that he’d never seen Peter eating anything that wasn’t some kind of leaf or yogurt.

“Yeah, no. Something about cows and the hole in the ozone, yadda yadda. ‘S fine. Red’s got a crippling diet for everyone. Me, on the other hand, now I got brains. So I tells the kid, hey, you _can_ pick meat off the cheese. Makes it vegetarian.”

Yeah, uh-huh. That’s right, Wade. It’s just that easy.

“That’s what _I_ said, you know? Anyways. Kid’s fine. Don’t worry about him, me and Red trade days; kid’s got two with me, two with him, then he’s got the weekend to fuck around and practice.”

No shit? That was like, six days of activity a week.

“Yeah, we had to cut back on some of the weekday patrols, which he ain’t like. But you know, Pete knows what’s good for him. Y’all should give him more credit. Nearly broke Red’s jaw the other day, ain’t ever seen that guy so proud. Had to take him in for X-rays an everything and the whole time, he’s just waxing poetic all over the kid. Embarrassing, is what that is.”

Jesus.

Noted.

“Well, alright,” he said, “As long as he’s not hurt. Thank you guys for stepping in, by the way. That’s cool of you.”

Wade gave him a curious look over of the top of his potting soil. He didn’t say anything, though. Just swung the bags back around and carried on, on his way.

 

 

 **SW:** hey bruce, rhodey. Located pete. DP and DD got him; he’s safe. They’re training the ever-loving fuck out of that poor child, though. Just FYI

 **JR:** sorry what

 **BB:** oh that’s a relief

 **JR:** we have different definitions of ‘relief.’

 **BB:** I’ll let Thor know. You got him worried the other day and he’s been trying to think up a training reg. of his own to hand over to the kid.

 **JR:** sorry I’m still stuck on Point 1. He’s with DP and DD? Is that safe for him?

 **SW:** yeah, actually. They’re taking good care of him.

 

 

 **TS:** Wilson, what the FUCK

 **TS:** Where are they training him? Who told you this?

 **SW:** oh hey, Truth finally comes out of her well to shame mankind. What’s good, Gollum?

 **TS:** you’re not funny. Seriously. Where’s the kid?

 **SW:** no idea. Hey, Tony. Have you ever considered maybe talking to the kid himself instead of avoiding the issue by having others talk to him?

 **SW:** no?

 **SW:** alright cool, just thought I’d put it out there.

Steve thought that Sam was the funniest, most handsome man in existence and Sam was more than happy to let him go one thinking that, provided it got him this level of kissing on the day to day.

JB thought that Sam should have just written the message out and staple-gunned it to the entrance of Stark’s lab and offered to go back and do it for him.

 

 

Sam finally, finally ran into Pete about a week later at the park where Peter was chilling with his friends over ice cream. It was getting warm, although Sam wasn’t sure it was warm enough for frozen food. But more importantly, the kid was tall as fuck. He had to be pushing 5’ 10” or something close to it. Sam got a little weepy, staring from afar, thinking about how when he’d met the little monster, he’d barely come up to his chin.

“Well, look who’s here,” he sang. Peter’s head jerked up in his direction and he lit up like the dawn. He told his buddies something and came galloping over like a baby giraffe to crush Sam in a hug.

And crush he did, holy _shit_.

“Pete, I’m dying,” he choked. Peter released him immediately, apologizing. Sam grinned back at him. “You’re big as hell, kiddo. What you been eating?”

Peter’s face fell a little bit, guilty, like he’d been caught.

“Uh, ice…cream?” he tried. Quietly.

Sam laughed.

“I won’t tell DD you’re shirking,” he promised. Peter lit up again.

“There are so many rules,” he whined. “No sugar, Mr. Wilson—he says no added sugar. You know how many things have added sugar??”

Yeah, he did baby boy.

Peter was happy. He was legitimately happy, not to mention cheerful and bouncy as ever. It almost made Sam’s heart hurt a bit to think that he hadn’t been when presented with the Avengers offer.

“You plan on coming back, Pete?” he asked.

Peter’s bubbliness slipped off his face and his eyes went from puppy-ish to solid. The change was remarkable. He was losing some of his baby fat in his cheeks and for a moment there, he looked almost like a real adult.

“No,” he said firmly. “Not now. Not soon.”

Sam nodded.

“That’s fine, I just had to ask,” he said.

Peter’s beaming grin returned.

“Thanks for understanding,” he said, even though Sam wasn’t sure he did, entirely. “Hey, we’re talking about college apps, you have any sage old people wisdom?”

What, so he was an old person now?

“Absolutely. You and Double D got the same kind of grump sometimes, but he told me college is for chumps and your undergrad means fuck all if you go on to grad school. You think I should do grad school?”

Sam was stuck on the fact that Peter had just said ‘fuck’ without flinching in his presence.

“Sam? Mr. Wilson?”

God, they really do grow up fast.

 

 

 **SW:** hey guys. Saw pete today. He’s actually thriving. Big as a house. Tell stark if you want, but he’s totally fine. Got no interest in joining up anytime soon, busy thinking about college.

 **BB:** oh no. My heart. I’m gonna cry.

 **JR:** thanks, sam.

 

 

“Nelson,” he said and scared the shit out of the poor guy from behind. Poor Nelson bent over to collect himself and curse Sam upon recognizing him. He waved a threatening finger behind him while he did this.

“I know nothing of any feuds,” was the first thing he said, which told Sam everything he needed to know about Stark’s involvement here.

“Didn’t know Tony knew you were associated with the kid,” he said.

“Our firm represented the Parkers a while back,” Nelson sighed, then harangued Sam until he got a coffee and came back over to walk with him.

“Ah, I see. Kid’s huge.”

“Tell me about it. Matty’s making him suffer, too, Sam, in more ways than one. We had to have a Come to Jesus over where that abuse boundary was—not even for Pete’s sake, man. Kid’s terrified. Matt just doesn’t even know where that line is, he gets all choked up when Pete lays one on him, but dude. Kid’s got fucking superstrength. The gals in the ER know all our names at this point.”

Sam snorted.

“You happen to know what’s up with the kid and Stark?”

Nelson sipped at his coffee and thought about it.

“I think Wade’s helping him work through whatever’s going on there,” he said. “I don’t have the full story, but I do know he’s pissed ‘cause he thinks that Stark’s trying to control him. Said once that he felt like the guy was trying to take his uncle’s place. He didn’t want to talk much after that, so that’s probably the heart of it.”

Oh.

That was much, much different than what Sam had been expecting. Nelson noticed his long pause and nudged him with his elbow.

“There might be a little more though, but let’s be clear that you didn’t hear it from me,” he continued. He waited for Sam’s quirked eyebrow before going on. “For example, let’s just go ahead and say that some people think that it would be pretty shitty for a kid to join a team like the Avengers without even really knowing who he is first or having the opportunity to find out. Some folks see that as a kind of soul-sucking endeavor and some folks are violently opposed to most forms of authority. And, hell, why don’t we just go ahead and round it off by saying that hella folks in a certain community adore Pete and have all been kind of mentoring him at the same time Stark was.”

Nelson gave him a bright smile. Sam smirked back.

“These folks bad influences?” he asked.

“Oh, the worst. But baby’s good and corrupted now. Sorry, Stark,” Nelson said without sounding sorry at all.

Sam laughed.

“Thanks, Nelson.”

“Call me Foggy. Lord knows y’all are in my house enough.”

“Thanks, Foggy.”

“You ain’t heard shit from me.”

“Copy that.”

It was good to have an in into the vigilante world.

 

 

 **SW:** Hi tony. Talked to some folks about your problem, don’t ever say I never did anything for you. All I got to say is that Peter’s already had and lost two dads, man. He’s not looking for a third. Maybe think about what’s going on in that gap of what he needs you to be and what you need him to be.

 **SW:** anyways, I’m washing my hands of this. Peace.

 

 

 **TS:** thanks sam

 

 

 **JR:** what do you do, Samuel Thomas

 **SW:** not a damn thing

 **JR:** you are a lying sack of shit, what did you do

 **JR:** there are feelings being talked about in this lab.

 **JR:** there have never been feelings discussed in this lab before. Ever. I’m about to call an ambulance.

 **SW:** I just prayed for deliverance, Rhodey. That’s all. Nothing more, nothing less.

 **JR:** you are going straight to hell for lying to your elders, but I’m gonna leave it for now.

 

 

It was another couple of months before he saw the kid. Sure, he saw him on tv and in the papers, ruining people’s lives and so on. But that was different. It was one thing to see Spiderman lunging past screens. It was another entirely to meet Spiderman on his turf, up high, for a job.

From behind, Peter was unrecognizable. It may as well have been someone else in the suit. He’d gained at least fifteen pounds in muscle. Eighteen years old and on the way to being built like a brick shithouse. Bottom heavy and fucking adorable, if Sam said so himself. That boy was going to wake up one day with thunder thighs and he was either going to be devastated or fucking delighted.

He turned their way and, for a second, Sam thought that he was going to say something painfully cool and prove that all the rest of them had been hopeless, lost causes at that age, but instead the first thing that came out of that child’s mouth was,

“So, I know I literally just got them, but does anyone know how to replace dorm keys? I got an idea for how to, but my fucking roommate doesn’t come home ‘til three and I can’t find a damn key cutter open 24 hours.”

And that’s when Sam knew, really truly knew, that that boy was going to be a riot.

 

 

 


End file.
